Better Schools for Our Children

More than $38 million in grants was given out by the Department of Defense Education Activity this year to 32 public school districts serving large numbers of military children. We are so often bludgeoned with incomprehensibly large numbers--who can even understand what a billion dollars really represents, much less a trillion?--that my first reaction to this news was to wonder “why so little?”  Then I realized that for a school district to receive on average more than a million dollars to help military children is no small thing.

According to Elaine Wilson’s Army News Service article, “Public Schools Serving Military Children Benefit from Grants,”  schools receiving grants have around 190,000 total students, approximately 37,000 of whom are from military families in communities near more than 30 military installations.

Kathleen Facon, chief of DoDEA's educational partnership, explains that "while we really want to enhance opportunities for military students, these grants also provide an opportunity to raise achievement for all students." It does work better, in my experience as an educator, to assume that any special program could benefit far more students than it targets, and it may work better for military students not to be singled out, but be part of a wider school program. 

  

Funding was based on the number of military-connected students at the school, with grants ranging from $150,000 to $2.5 million. Most focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, many using innovative technology such as smart phones and other hand-held devices to learn math.  For a professor teaching humanities, as I do, smart phones create a parallel universe of text messaging, so I had to smile at the idea of a classroom full of students told to pull out their phones rather than put them away!

Classroom academics are not the only focus of the grants. Military children transitioning into a new school often need help adjusting to new demands, both academic and social.  Colleges recognize how difficult it is to step into the middle of an ongoing class, and they don’t allow it, but K-12 is a different matter, and if a new family shows up five, ten, twenty weeks into a school year, the children are thrown right into the middle of what may be an unfamiliar curriculum and different classroom environment. Several grants address these needs, funding programs to facilitate class placement and social integration, or offering after-school homework clubs and tutoring.

I have written in the past about one of the grantees under the DoDEA’s program, a consortium of districts in my own area (San Diego) that is working with the University of Southern California’s Masters of Social Work students on a program to help schools in the area be more responsive to students from military families. 

An estimated 90 percent of military students attend public schools.  Though the DoDEA’s effort can provide important planning information and identify  promising practices, in the end the $38 million will only impact a few children. I wonder what the plan is for the others.